522 Description of the Species of Camellia and Thea. 



Kewensis to have been introduced in 1811, by the Honourable 

 Court of Directors of the East India Company, in the 

 Cuffnells, Captain Welbank. Its specific name {Sasanqua) 

 is that by which it is known in Japan, where, as well as in 

 China, it is very extensively cultivated. 



It is of a loose straggling habit, but if the principal stem be supported when 

 young, it will attain the height of six or eight feet. The branches are mostly 

 pendulous, round, and twiggy, of a deep brown colour, deciduously villous and 

 weak. The leaves are elliptic-lanceolate, thick, smooth, and flat, upwards of two 

 inches long and one inch broad, with small roundish serratures ; they are of a 

 dark shining green, and have a prominent pale green villous midrib. The 

 footstalks are about a quarter of an inch long, slightly villous, and channelled 

 above, rounded beneath, nearly smooth, and of a pale green colour. The flower 

 buds are sometimes produced singly from the axils of the leaves, but generally 

 they are nearly terminal, solitary and sessile. They vary in size, and are com- 

 paratively smaller than those of C. Oleifera or C. Maliflora, of a roundish oval 

 form, covered with numerous roundish concave imbricated pale green silky scales. 

 The flowers which are white, open in November and December, and are each 

 about one inch and a half or two inches in diameter, very much resembling those 

 of the Tea Tree. They are pretty freely produced, and are composed of from 

 five to ten, or even more, oval, concave, sometimes obcordate, slightly incurved 

 petals, ranged in one or two rows, according as the flower happens to be single or 

 semi-double. In the former case the petals are nearly half an inch in breadth, 

 and expand almost flat ; but in the latter they are a little twisted, and seldom ex- 

 ceed a quarter of an inch in breadth at their extremity. The filaments are fili- 

 form, rather shorter than the petals, generally spreading, though sometimes they 

 rise in a close cylindrical sort of cup, and surround the styles, which are three in 

 number, united as in the other species, and of a pale greenish yellow colour, with 

 simple stigmas. The anthers are large, two-lobed, deep yellow. 



In the Botanical Register, vol. I. p. 12, where an excellent 

 figure is given of it, this is supposed to be the Thea oleosa 

 of Loureiro {Flora Cochinch. p. 414) but from that author's 

 description, it is not possible to determine the point satisfac- 

 torily ; his account coincides in many respects with Camellia 

 Sasanqua, and he also states that the Thea oleosa is called by 

 the Chinese Che-dedn. 



Sir George Staunton, in his account of Lord Macart- 

 ney's Embassy, vol. ii. p. 467, has given a good figure of the 



